


Striker Obsidian

by Johan



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Blood and Injury, Delinquent Keith (Voltron), Falling In Love, M/M, Mind Meld, Minor Character Death, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Shiro has PTSD, Slow Burn, Trans Keith (Voltron), Trust Issues, Veteran Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:09:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22136080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johan/pseuds/Johan
Summary: Takashi Shirogane is a veteran of the Kaiju War with a few too many nightmares to keep him company. Following four years of self-imposed isolation from the public eye, the once legendary Jaeger pilot feels distant and adrift. No matter how highly the others think of him, he is certain he has little more to offer the world.Keith Kogane is a Garrison drop-out with a few too many marks on his criminal record. Four years skirting in and out of Hong Kong smuggling rings and two more kept to heel by an organization he desperately wants to leave have left him angry and jaded. He’s long given up hope of moving beyond a past that casts a dark shadow over him everywhere he goes.But Keith and Shiro soon find themselves copilots of humanity's latest war machine — a Jaeger called Striker Obsidian. Bearing a terrible and potentially unethical secret, yet as the last real gambit to turn the tide of war, it carries a monumental weight upon its shoulders. But a team-up between a world-weary pilot and drop-out delinquent might be just what the Garrison needs to end the Kaiju threat for good — and just what Shiro and Keith need to finally make amends with their demons.(Or: sheith mindmeld au with monsters and mechs.)
Relationships: Keith & Shiro & Black Lion (Voltron), Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 25





	Striker Obsidian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RhapsodyInWaves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RhapsodyInWaves/gifts).



> Hello! I love monsters and mind melding and Voltron and sheith, and this story is my attempt at meshing those things together into one cohesive plot. No PacRim knowledge is needed to understand this fic, but the movie is a _lot_ of fun and one of my favorites, so I highly recommend watching it when you can. 
> 
> This fic is 100% dedicated to [Ari](https://twitter.com/yallstari), who is the best event partner I could have asked for. I was unable to meet my deadline for the fandom event we tagteamed for, but she sure did meet hers, and as a result she has posted artwork for scenes that occur later on in this story. Please, please go [check out her stuff](https://twitter.com/yallstari/media)! The art will be posted in the corresponding chapters as they get finalized, but even the very first scene involved is a few chapters away, so please do not hesitate to look at and support her stuff now!
> 
> I'll be adding tags as the scenarios in them spring up with the exception of two important ones that I know will be a deal breaker for some people (graphic depictions of violence, minor character death). Without being too specific in case you want to go in blind, the minor character that dies is both named and important to the main cast, and **graphic depictions of violence** occur during some of the Kaiju battles. While this is very much a hopeful story, know also that Shiro and Keith allude to some tough experiences in their past. Because this story is fully planned and most of the first draft is written, I am aware of all potentially triggering scenarios that will occur within it and can answer any questions if you have any concerns.
> 
> I think that's all. Thanks for checking out this fic, and again, please go check out Ari's art. ^^

Keith’s breath rattles out pinched and uneven. A tingling pricks up his arms as he moves through the laboratory set-up, and the background chatter blends around him in a tenuous buzz, throwing his gait into something unsettled. He moves as if haunted.

Often, it feels like he is.

He keeps his focus narrow, his center of gravity steady — _firm_ — and thinks back on all the places he’d rather be: upon the roof of the west-end observatory, below stars that flare white in the bled-black sky; huddled beyond the base’s watch, off an enclave where the recovering city life mingles near the ruins of the shore; on a bike, low and thrumming, that speeds along the desert plains, miles from this bustling military epicenter and many more from the people within it.

They’re calm and familiar memories. They're Keith’s respite, his vision of peace, and they keep him grounded when the world about him rages like a storm.

He feels weathered nevertheless.

When he moves to the storage cabinet, it’s with a clockwork rigidity. A wave of vertigo forces his head down and posture stiff. His fingers feel near-numb: blunted, yet coursing underskin with an emotion he can’t name, and it doesn’t make sense — because he’s not nervous, he’s _not_ , and the too-tight gloves upon his hands aren't small enough to cause pain — but unexplained sensations are par for the course at this point in his life, so he pushes on.

"Don’t you need to tie your hair back?” James asks. He raps the back of his neck twice, mirroring the spot where Keith's hair falls loose behind him.

Keith glowers. “Aren’t there rules here against wearing shitty cologne?”

It’s not elegant, but it works as intended; Keith is left alone after no more than a frown, and they continue to gather up lab equipment with no personal contact.

Petri dishes, microscope slides, and scattered paperwork litter the surface of their shared blacktop counter soon enough — and it's so messy, so hefted and dense, that Keith is sure they’ll be told off for it. The room is a pressurized cage brimming with restless students and cruel intentions, and though that thought makes Keith want to scream his throat red and raw, he’s braved far worse than an hour of Garrison-mandated civility. 

Better to put up with James now than let him dictate what Keith can and cannot do with his life.

And, _fuck_ , they both know who’d do better on any of the tasks that actually matter.

Kaiju scales, the experiment’s focal point, line the center table in carefully spaced rows, almost checkerboard in layout. They’re crimson in sheen, but a blotchy black webbing encroaches upon their cores from the outer rims. It’s a discoloration spread through years of dormancy and decay, and all Keith can think of when he sees it is of dried blood and decomposing carcasses. Dead things. Things long gone.

 _Trespasser_ has been felled: its attack memorialized, then commercialized, long ago. And it’s here, in a new student wing off the well-lauded San Francisco Shatterdome, where pilots-to-be sing war-songs in hopes of one day taking down the monsters who invaded their home.

They’re the hope for humanity. The latest part of the well-intentioned program set up to keep the next generation of Jaeger pilots running strong in a war with no end in sight.

But in the harsh, headache-inducing lights of the lab, surrounded by students who needle him and whisper untruths, Keith can’t help but feel that good intentions hold very little meaning. He selects his target with his thoughts far-off and away.

A shock hits like a stampede — thunderous and strong. Heat breaks through Keith’s arm with a bone-shattering strength. It’s the cut of a knife, the burn of a flame, and Keith jerks back before it can leave him any more than stunned.

The scale clatters to the table, and Keith stumbles from it, winded and wide-eyed.

“Slippery hands?” James mocks, appearing behind him. He picks it up, and Keith finds himself staring at the empty space where it lay seconds before. “Figures. Just don’t break it.”

Keith tears his gaze up, but a sweep of the room reveals no cause for concern. A trio of students two tables down are just finishing up. Another, three away, is laughing. One is daydreaming as her partner doodles in the margins of her notebook. James continues to be an ass.

He looks back to the scales, considers them, and, to his credit, thinks it through before acting. But he isn’t much for half-commitment, and there isn't really much choice.

The next touch sparks another shock — but now, as he refuses to let go, a vision alongside it. Keith has the thought, not for the first time, of fire in the crowded room. Of bladed teeth and spines, and a bright form trudging through ruined streets. Of a monstrous, unsightly silhouette cast against a city that cannot fight back against, crimson-blood in deathly appearance, just like it should be, all the more threatening as the records claim.

Agitation and the sight of _Trespasser_ linger before him even as he withdraws. He pulls his gloved hand to his chest, turning it over twice, and it seems to move on its own.

His hand _is_ shaking, he realizes. It’s not his head pulling tricks on him. He looks left to where another student is fidgeting with the coarse adjustment of her microscope. He looks right to where another is doing the same.

Then he grabs metal prongs and knocks the sample into a petri dish lid. He can’t decide whether it’s better or worse that nothing happens with added barrier, but he holds the specimen tight and strong before him nevertheless.

He throws the potential hypotheses out one by one:

It can’t be quintessence poisoning because the Kaiju’s been dead too long to hurt people.

It can’t be Kaiju Blue because the scales are fossil-dry.

It can’t be _him_ because he’s done nothing new.

But the problem remains, and Keith watches on, and James’ patience wears thin.

“Look, are you doing _drugs_ or something?”

Keith grasps the lid all the tighter. He’s hit with a sudden full-body shiver. “Why?" he snaps. "Do you want some?”

James is too poised to roll his eyes, but the way he adjusts the lab manual on the desk is as clear a fuck-you as any. “ _Why_ does it not surprise me the charity case is taking shit under official watch."

Keith clenches his teeth. He puts the scale down in front of the microscope.

And yeah, he shouldn’t. It’s a bad idea. There are so many reasons he shouldn’t that he could pen a multipage, small-fonted list twice through. But his hands shake, and his head hurts, and this room is suddenly one of the most unbearable locations he’s ever been in.

"If anyone needed drugs to give them the edge here, Griffin, it wouldn’t be me.”

James gives no immediate reaction, but it’s a sure hit. He’s pride incarnate: the straight-A Garrison brownnoser who’s far too desperate to be perfect on paper. Extra credit, after-hour activities, the whole shebang.

He's also three levels below Keith in their sim scores.

James picks up a scale and examines it with false casualty. He doesn’t yell because that’s not how he works through insults, but his voice turns carefully low. “These scales are unusually vibrant for their age,” he says. “Weird, don’t you think? It’s been sixteen years since _Trespasser_ was killed, and Kaiju bodies lose notable quintessence radiation by five.”

 _Four and a half_ , Keith almost bites back, and he balls his fists from a sudden surge of anger. His arms shake. His chest feels pressured. But — _fuck_ — as if anyone here could forget the length of the danger. As if James is saying this for any reason than to piss Keith off.

And his attention falls back to his hands, where the tightness of his gloves seems to be compounding with his sweat into something new. He sways, and more important than James’ shitty taunting is how his body becomes displaced and foreign.

His heartbeat feels a little off. Quicker, but also lighter. Skipping and skimming like a seabird on the ocean surface.

James is unperturbed. “A lot of people were killed in the aftermath of its attack. Do you think anyone realized even the body was going to be a problem years out?”

The effects of quintessence weren’t known well back then, and he’s only asking it to make Keith answer. Keith’s clenches his fist — breathe, breath, _breathebreathe_ , don’t listen to James — but for some reason his pulse has picked up speed. He finds himself drawn to the crimson scale before him, and then, as James flashes the other once more, to the one in his hand. He shakes. The scales gleam.

While James — James places his back on the table.

“Drones recorded a peak temperature off _Trespasser_ of 964 degrees. The hottest ever by a longshot. It took a while for the corpse to cool off, too, didn't it? Its scales could have conceivably started fires even months after its attack.”

The unease is a glowing ember within Keith by now. His stomach feels flipped, and the sweat on his body seems not to belong to him. _Trespasser_ crosses his mind again. And James does, too — with his slicked-back hair and his perfectly pressed uniform and his stupid, half-perched safety goggles. Pale gaze, paler demeanor.

Keith screws up his nose in concentration.

“Of course, unlike the quintessence deal, the heat problem was apparent early on, so I’m just saying—”

He leans in, and Keith meets him dead on. Their eyes meet. Keith’s not looking away now. He’s not going to break. He dares him to finish the thought. His muscles outright _ache_.

“Do you think that's what your _dad_ thought when he—”

Keith slams James to the table, and its contents fling clean off. He snarls and scratches and _yells_ , tearing the rough white fabric beneath his fingers until he earns a choked cry. They crash to the floor and a few of the stray papers land with them, behind a table leg, through the air, and Keith presses forward with targeted intensity, using his elbow as leverage until a blow buffers into James’ exposed neck. Keith scratches with his other hand, afire, deep into James’ ribs, sweat still lining them both, and keeps on until he feels skin break under his nails.

“Dude,” James gasps, “what — the hell—!” He latches onto Keith’s wrist but succeeds only in drawing blood to match because Keith won't let himself be thrown. James digs at Keith’s shoulder and kicks, pounds, hits to dislodge.

Any movement between them is chaos, limited by the table trapping them down. James headbuts him, and Keith retaliates with a forearm parry. It must look like a joke, two teenagers brawling like children in oversized coats and clothing.

There are murmurs, but Keith tunes them out and slams James with another punch to the face.

“Hey, uh…!”

Keith ignores the call, as well as all the whispers that have joined in under it. James fights to stand, but Keith has him pinned and caught and squirming like a drowned rat. But Keith is the one who feels like he's drowning; everything is static and blurred, a mess of colors and noise, and it’s only when he sees that James’ nose is bleeding that he finds it in himself to pause at all.

The static in his mind wavers his vision. It flashes out. He hisses and stands, dropping his grip on James, who, small mercies, doesn't move to re-engage. He pants — breathes in fire — and turns only once one of the student’s calls becomes too loud to ignore.

A classmate Keith’s paid no mind to — a newcomer to the Garrison with a tubby, nervous look about him — has eyes elsewhere in the room.

Keith follows his gaze to find the Kaiju scales strewn about the floor. They’re cracked in two, chipping further on the sides.

The incredibly hard to secure, incredibly valuable Kaiju scales from humanity’s first victory against the invaders.

A feeling of anxiety rises within Keith, as blazing as everything else.

 _God. Fuck_. He shouldn’t have done that.

But the hairs on the back of his neck stand at the sensation of being watched, and he can think of little more. The whispers strengthen to clear voices, and though Keith can’t understand what they’re saying, they don't sound like his classmates. Something he can’t see circles the room; somehow, he knows it. He hears overlapping cackles and jeers, turned louder and louder until they’re indistinguible and monotone. He bristles. Jerks. His eyes dart around.

There, then gone, then there again. Keith sees _Trespasser_ within his mind’s eye. It’s within the room, within himself. He steps back and slams into a vent hood, and the hit reverberates through his shoulder. The vision of the Kaiju follows him, and it’s circling —

The heat in his mind grows stronger: fire, bold and beautiful in the storm. His concentration frays, his location senses break down, and he quivers, but he able to zero in one one fact: that there’s danger. That he’s in danger, and if something out there wants him dead, he has to defend himself with all he has.

He draws the knife hidden at his thigh.

James crashes up against the table with a yelp.

Keith’s pulse pounds all the harder.

Keith's near hyperventilation. His eyes dart around the room: to the Kaiju scales; to the tubby classmate; to James, breath laden with shock as blood falls from his nose.

To Commander Iverson, entered from the door sometime in his panic, while Keith's knife flashes aglint and unsubtle in the laboratory light.

And with that, the gravity of the situation crashes down.

On Iverson’s face is a fury Keith’s never seen before. “Cadet!” he barks. “Drop the weapon.”

Cold terror grips Keith, and it’s from a source unrelated to the visions. He backs to the wall as a tremor wracks his body.

Shit.

Shit shit shit. He’d only kept the knife as a precaution in case he had to — it’s _illegal_ , and they’re not supposed to know —

All eyes are on him. James, Iverson, the classmate, the Kaiju. The frizzling under his brain reaches a fever pitch as his eyes glide past the crowd. Back still to the wall, knife still drawn, he slides. Slides down and away from the commander, reaching the window with screeching senses.

“Cadet. Now!”

Keith doesn’t drop _jackshit_. He pulls the safety latch of the window open with strange imprecision. A classmate yells at him to stop from her seated position, but he's already half gone by the time it clicks as a request. The drop is almost a story and a half, but instincts following years mimicking his father’s fire drills leave him bounding across the way unharmed.

Keith runs. He runs until he’s half across the base. His heart speeds on a mile a minute, and the image of _Trespasser_ follows him wherever he moves within the labyrinth of gray buildings and signs. More than anything else, in this place, he feels lost in it.

He's never acted out this badly before. Never drawn a fucking _knife_ on anyone before. Never would have thought to.

But he knows no one would believe him if he says it wasn't meant for James. No one believes orphaned state tossabouts when it’s inconvenient, and if Keith knows one thing it’s that his existence, it's that he's inconvenient to everyone around him.

He pulls to the dorm room and begins to tear down anything important — the faded picture of his dad, the newspaper covering the fire. He shoves them all into his bag and grabs provisions — water, utensils, and a jar of peanut butter — and that's good enough.

This was his last chance to not mess up, and he blew it. He scrunches his eyes and fights tears.

But what's the loss? Why should he be sad? He's not wanted here. This training ground is no more suited to Keith than a mangy dog to a fancy ball. What were the chances he'd ever drift with someone anyway?

He’s sick of James and his taunting, sick of the administration turning a blind eye to things it shouldn't, and sick of being here any longer than he has to be.

Maybe he could convince Iverson if he groveled and brought his all, but anger overtakes him even considering it. His excellent scores got him in; his personality kicked him out. Fitting enough.

 _Fuck_ them.

He’s not going to beg to be somewhere that _hates_ him.

Blood trails from his wound as he crosses campus, but if anyone notices the dark stain on his sleeve or limped run, they don't point it out. His hair is annoying, falling in his eyes mid-gait, and he thinks that maybe he should let it grow out long enough to pull back. He shovels off his white lab coat to reveal the ugly orange of the Pan-Pacific Garrison cadet uniform underneath.

He won’t be needing either of those anymore.

He arrives in the eastern hanger with his knife in hand and breaks the lock — and it's easy; he's done it before, and you’d _think_ they'd have upped the security to something better by now. He searches, surveys, and selects his target: a motorcycle, Garrison-grade. He rides it to the outskirts of the city, and time flies along with him.

 _Don’t look back_ , Keith begs himself, clinging to the image of his father, the only kind thing that ever lived in this city. He leans into the handlebars until the wind overtakes all around him. It pounds against him in waves, over his ducked-down head and under his ridden-up shirt, and his hair whips icily to his neck, then against his cheeks and forehead alike, wild and untamed like desert wrens of his childhood home.

 _Keep going_. And he is going: south-east, to where his father lived once and where Keith may live once more. To a shack of broken items in the desert of his youth, far away from the Garrison and all others in the world.

The vision of what he’s left prickles at him.

 _Just don’t turn around_ , he thinks desperately. _Just don’t look back_.

And on his stolen vehicle, as he voyages miles into the suburbs and then beyond to where the lights of civilization dim to pinpoints, he never does.

Not willingly.


End file.
